We are studying probability this week. In general, we have a sense of what chance is, so now we are just adding the formality to it through the lessons. Let's think about probability on the discussion, but not get too formal. You are going to make a class experiment!

I like dice games - especially Yahtzee. Yahtzee is a game where you roll 5 six-sided dice and try over three attempts to get all 5 of the dice to show the same number. When you do, you yell "YATZEE!!!" and gloat over the other players. So for my experiment, I'm going to pretend that three of the dice are showing 6s, after two rolls. So I rolled dice 1000 times (I cheated and used Excel) to see how many times I would have scored a Yahtzee!!! by rolling 2 more sixes.

My outcomes and probabilities are:

• rolled 2 sixes = 31/1000 = 0.031
• did not roll 2 sixes = 969/1000 = 0.969

To make this understandable, I convert a proportion to a percentage by multiplying 0.031 by 100. So I got the YATZEE!!! 3.1 percent of the time. That is pretty good!

To convert this to odds I divide 1 by the proportion. 1/0.31 = 32.26... roughly meaning the odds of rolling two 6s is 1 in every 32 attempts. That is REALLY good. The odds of rolling two sixes are 1:36 (2.7 percent... I beat the odds!)

You won't be rolling dice, but you are going to make and perform an experiment. Here's your tasks:

1. Post 1: Design a simple experiment and perform it enough times (at least 10) to come up with probabilities based on the outcomes you experience. It can be something as simple as going out and asking people what their favorite color car is or seeing if you can flip a water bottle to get it to land upright. It should be something that other people can also do, and not dangerous! make your probability distribution as I have done here, based on your responses. Be sure to post this as early in the week as possible!
2. Post 2: Perform someone else's experiment and post your results as a response to their experiment.
3. Post 3: Respond to someone who completed YOUR experiment. Discuss why their results are or are not reasonable. Did they get what you would have expected them to get? Why might this come out different?